I saw something today that intrigued me,. Bill Gates is working on it, Solar Dimming Technology" my first thought was “Wow” “fantastic” something I have thought about for a long time. But then I started to imagine implementing and operating such a project and all I could see was red flags everywhere. We have the perfect storm brewing for the biggest scam that mankind has ever experienced. #1, people are desperate for a solution! I may be slightly overestimating this but the people who are involved and desperate are very passionate about what they do, and they carry more weight. #2 Climate activists are somewhat desperate for different reasons, if the time comes and goes and their dire predictions are not happening they loose credibility. #3 it fits the bill for that once in every 20 years or so piece of technology that will account for a few percentage points of the worlds GDP. #4 highly motivated ambassadors for this product are already in place. #5. It would not necessarily even have to work and we would not know it. Years could easily be explained away and natural occurrences that favored the product would be credited to the new technology. #6 It is just too easy for big money to pull off.
On the flip side, if this really is effective and works it would be the greatest thing since white bread.
I don’t think this is true. It’s a conflation between other people’s work on ‘solar shields in soace’, which Gates is not a part of, and a small Harvard feasibility study called SCoPEx, which is looking into using aerosols in the atmosphere to block sunlight, which Gates did help fund.
This story seems to be 2 or 3 years old. The most recent “news” release from the above link was a year ago, linking to a research article.
The gist of the current Harvard research seems to be “spraying non-toxic calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere — a sun-reflecting aerosol that may offset the effects of global warming.” (from here). They started in a small area above Sweden, for reasons. Research results don’t seem to have been widely propagated, which sounds like they may have been inconclusive.
There’s a potential for scam with plenty of new ideas, especially around politically hot areas like Climate Change. See how many hyperloop scams have already failed, or fanciful electric airplane designs that existed solely to extract money from governments and investors.
In the case of a giant shield in space, it would be such a large project that there would be huge scrutiny on it. I’m not sure it’s the most ripe place for a scam. Better to get someone to render a nice looking futuristic air taxi, then start fleecing investors.
Agree w @Sam_Stone; what kind of scam are you anticipating?
And are you trying to suggest the very idea of climate modification is a potential scam area, that solar shielding is scam-potential or is a per se scam now, or are you suggesting that the project(s) that Gates is backing are scams?
I see it as a potentially very important field that could quickly and easily devolve simply because there is so much potential money around it and the urgency to do something is great. Monitoring the effectiveness of the program might be extremely difficult yet easy to mislead. Oversite would need to be extremely robust.